It really depends on the situation. Most of the time, we have our blood work done before our diagnostic imaging. For instance, if your dog has elevated liver values, we would want to look into this via an ultrasound. In our practice, we focus on preventative medicine and annual blood work, allowing us to catch a lot of problems before they become symptomatic. There are cases, however, where a patient comes in feeling sick, in which instance we might have diagnostic imaging going at the same time that our blood work is going. This helps us get a better clinical picture of what's happening and to narrow down the possible causes, leading to a more targeted treatment plan. With dogs and cats coming in for vomiting or diarrhea, the list of possibilities is pages. Because you can think about it, every abdominal organ that could be having problems can cause these symptoms. So we have to very quickly narrow the field down so we can have a targeted treatment plan to figure out how we can address this.

Is it the liver that's having problems? Then we're going to do liver medication and possible hospitalization. There's a lot that goes into it, but these diagnostics are there to help us narrow the field. If I'm looking at a dog that comes in for vomiting and diarrhea and I don't have any imaging or lab work, I have to just treat it symptomatically, and that's not always the best because what if the liver is failing, and we're just addressing tummy upset but we don't address the liver disease. If an older patient vomits and doesn't feel well, the owner doesn't want to or maybe can't afford diagnostic imaging, and we treat it symptomatically, what if that patient has a big cancer tumor in its abdomen. We would have made a completely different decision on what to do and what steps to take if we'd had that imaging.

The duration of anesthesia varies depending on the procedure. Neuters might not take as long while spays are more lengthy and invasive procedures. Dentals depend on the grade and the amount of dental work that has to be done. The specifics can be asked prior to having your cat set up for anesthesia.

Pain control in cats is taken seriously as cats are good at hiding their pain. The premeds include ketamine for pain-blocking effects. Before placing the breathing tube, they get an injection of Cerenia for anti-nausea and anti-inflammatory effects. They might also get an injection of Onsior, an anti-inflammatory that lasts for 24 hours. Local blocks are used to control pain from the skin and muscle layer. Once in recovery, they get an injection of buprenorphine for pain control given either under the skin, lasting 24 hours, or by IV, lasting about six to eight hours, depending on which type of buprenorphine you give.

The same monitoring used during human anesthesia is used for cats. This includes checking blood pressure, EKG, oxygen levels with the pulse ox, CO2 levels in the blood, temperatures, jaw tone, respiratory rate, and heart rate. A veterinary technician is assigned to monitor the pet while it's under anesthesia.

Yes, they will. You do need to be a current client with Four Paws at Fulshear because you need a doctor-patient relationship prior to getting a treatment plan for surgery. That is required by Texas state law. By having an exam, I can catch any possible health issues that your cat may have prior to anesthesia. That way we can tailor anesthetic procedures for them.

Common anesthetic procedures for cats include dentals, feline neuters, feline spays, growth removals, and c-sections. We may also give anesthesia when we are taking x-rays if the cat's been hurt. If cats can't be cooperative or they're getting stressed, then we might give them some sedation to get our samples for testing, like drawing blood or doing treatments. So if we have a pet that's not quite sick enough to get hospitalized but sick enough to need treatments, then we may give some sedation to get those treatments done in hospital to make sure that it's not stressful for the cat. We do try to practice fear-free medicine as much as possible.

There are two different types of anesthesia used at Four Paws at Fulshear Veterinary Clinic. These are injectable anesthesia and gas anesthesia. The clinic most commonly uses a combination of both. Cats get pre-medicated with injectable sedation and once they have their breathing tube down, they're maintained on gas anesthesia.

I've never personally seen this happen, though I believe it is possible. If it ever does stop working, we can simply put another chip in to make sure that your pet can be easily found if they get out and are scanned.

In my 11 years of being a veterinarian, and another eight years as a veterinary technician, I've only ever seen one case of a side effect. This was when a dog's body formed a small hard nodule around the microchip, and we had to remove it. Otherwise, the risk of side effects are super low. The microchips are made from a material that the body's not going to react with, much like how gold or platinum is hypoallergenic.